Welcome to Pop Pantheon, the podcast where DJ Louie and guests overanalyze your favorite pop stars, then rank them in the official Pop Pantheon.

This is your host, Russ. I'm stepping in for DJ Louis this week asking, as always, please rate and review this podcast

wherever you're listening.

It really does help us out.

You can buy our merch at Poppantheonpod.com.

We have some new stuff up there.

Follow us on Instagram at Pop Pantheon Pod. There is a gorgeous, gorgeous coming up

on June 12th at the Lincoln Center in New York. It looks very fun. As always, you can find dates

for both Los Angeles and New York parties at gorgeous, gorgeous party on Instagram. Now,

what am I doing here? This week, I am filling in for Louis,

because last week, he joined up with Hazel Sills to share picks for the best pop of the year

thus far. I like to have the most holistic look possible for mainstream pop, which includes all of these stuff along the

edges. Louis for this show is very focused on the Ui-Gooey center of pop, the absolute bullseye,

the bulletproof most popular stuff in the genre. I want to go through some of the stuff that is on some of the outer edges of that.

So this is the best pop that you might have missed, which is more my world and expertise.

I love to listen to everything, every Friday, as much as I possibly can, as much as my ears

will take. And I have called in a returning guest

to help me scan the field, pitchfork, writer, and critic Walden Green. Walden, thanks for coming

back to the show today. Frankly, I cannot believe I was invited back, but I'm so happy to be here.

We loved having you on the Lana Atlanta draft. The audience had some absolutely

wild takes towards that. They thought that those takes for a wild. I will not wait into any

of that here. But all of that is to say, we're very happy to have you back. Now, as I explained, today we are looking at things that are a little bit more niche,

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